* Teaching grade would include all teachers on the common scale, senior teachers and assistant principal teachers. Fewer and larger increments and progression subject to confirmation of professional progress through an agreed annual review.

* Salary for 18,000 teachers at top of current scale as of April 1, 2001, will be pound;25,750, lower than previous estimates but still a 17.3 per cent rise. The employers have dropped their original plan for a special performance bar at pound;23,000.

* Professional leadership teachers will include existing principal teachers in secondary and will also apply in primary and special schools. Staff will have to apply for positions after meeting special performance criteria. Up to 8,000 posts available with an initial bias towards primary schools.

* Teachers on the teaching grade who meet the criteria would constitute a pool from which recruits would be drawn. They would be "accredited professional leaders" and placed on a special salary point until positions become vacant.

* Serving principal teachers would be assimilated, meeting one union criticism, although they would have to apply for full professional leadership status.

* Minimum pay rise for principal teachers would now be 10 per cent, increasing to 13.5 per cent. Above pound;31,000, staff will be expected to meet further performance criteria, taking salaries up to pound;36,000. This is the Government's "superteacher". Few appointments expected initially.

* The management grade will include head, depute and assistant on a reduced scale.

Hours

* Still being debated but councils have dropped a plan to put 70 hours on the working year. Now want an unspecified contribution from teachers largely under the direction of headteachers to fulfil the Government's social inclusion agenda of homework clubs, supported study, summer schools and home-school liaison. It's the "something for something" agenda of ministers. The EIS sees it as the "annualisation" of the teaching year.

* Class contact time will be 23.5 hours for all staff in primary and secondary and 22.5 in special schools. Primary teachers currently have 25 hours, 1.5 hours more than secondary colleagues.

Pay

* Employers have recalculated pay over three years, offering 3.5 per cent from April 1 this year, 3 per cent next April, followed quickly by a regrading in August 2000. A further 3 per cent will be added in April 2001. Previously they had not indicated the rise in the third year, merely saying it would be above inflation.

* Headline rises of 27 per cent now reduced as money is redistributed.

Class sizes

* The removal of the composite class maximum is still being debated. If the current limit of 25 stays, it is likely to cut amount of cash for pay by around pound;20 million. But councils are insisting all classes should have a maximum of 30 pupils, down from 33.

Other changes

* Employers want absence cover agreed locally, the level at which most conditions of service would be debated. Scope for changes to rights on family and personal leave.

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